Shattered Sky (14 page)

“All better now,” he said, standing up.

The woman looked down, and gasped. In a moment she was up, testing her new leg, walking on it, bursting into tears.

Winston quickly reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and read the text.

Come ASAP 483 Mill Road, Lake Arrowhead.

And the message was signed
“D.C.”

Dillon! Winston's heart skipped a beat, and he began to calculate the fastest path from Bel Air to the mountain community of Lake Arrowhead, a two-hour journey, at least.

The woman was now absorbed in ballet moves, watching herself in a full-length mirror. “I don't know how to thank you,” she said.

“I do.” Winston approached her, and handed her a slip of paper that contained a bank account number.

“Whatever you feel it was worth, deposit in this account,”
he said. “And when people ask, don't tell them anything.” Then Winston showed himself out.

A
T DAWN
, W
INSTON DROVE
past the Lake Arrowhead address three times before finding it. The deteriorating cabin just off the hillside road was hidden behind a gauntlet of overgrown pines, and appeared as unloved as a place could be, except for the fact that a shiny red SUV sat in the driveway.

It only took a moment for Winston to make the connection—something he should have considered from the moment he received the page—but he had so wanted it to be a message from Dillon, that he neglected to consider that the initials D.C. could belong to more than one person.

Winston knocked on a door painted a deep rustic blue, and peeling like eucalyptus bark. When he received no answer, he knocked again. This time a very tired voice beckoned from within. “Come in. The door's open.”

Winston slowly pushed open the door to reveal a figure sitting in the gray shadows of the cabin. He couldn't see the face, but he knew who it was. Drew Camden sat lazily in a rocking chair, his feet up on a coffee table, gently pushing himself back and forth.

“Welcome to my humble commode,” said Drew.

Winston stepped closer, his eyes beginning to adjust to the dawn yawning through the dusty windows. He tried a light switch, to no success.

“Don't bother,” said Drew. “My parents haven't paid the electric bill on this place for years. I think they've forgotten they own it.”

What Winston had first taken to be a coffee table in front of Drew was actually a foot-locker, strangely out of place in the faded country furnishing of the cottage.

“Three and a half hours,” said Drew. “Wherever you were, you made good time.”

The casual laziness to Drew's voice was markedly off, and there was a bloody dressing encircling his left forearm.

“Twenty-three stitches. I told my parents I ran into a gate while jogging. The simplest lies are the best.”

On the edge of the foot locker sat an orange vial of pills. Winston reached for it, but it was too dark to read the label.

“Vicodin,” volunteered Drew. “Takes away the pain and a whole lot more.”

“How many of these did you take, Drew?”

“Oh . . . more than I should have, but not enough to kill me.” He took a glance at the foot locker. “Can't numb everything, though.”

Looking at Drew made his own arm hurt. Winston rolled his neck, and rubbed his eyes. The looming dawn was no friend to Winston today. Not when he hadn't slept for almost two days.

“You paged me, Drew, and I came. Would you mind telling me why I'm here?”

Drew looked away for a moment, then angled his eyes toward Winston again. “I want to talk about my mother.”

Winston sighed. “I'm not your therapist.”

“My mother began packing things away in our house last week,” Drew said, ignoring him. “First it was just old clothes, but once she got started, it was like she couldn't stop. She boxed clothes we still wore, kitchen utensils, plates, crystal. I come home from school, and half the house is neatly packed away in boxes. ‘What's the matter, Ma,' I said. ‘Are we moving?' ‘No' she says, sitting at the table, drinking coffee, ‘just getting our affairs in order.' She doesn't know why she's getting her affairs in order. She just is. Like the way my father
cleaned out a year's worth of crap in his downstairs office. Getting his affairs in order.”

Winston sighed. This was nothing new. It was no more strange than the millions of other people sensing an end to the comfortable paved roads of their lives; a coming evil they dared not consider in their conscious life.

“What do you want me to tell you, Drew?”

“I want you to tell me what the hell is going on. Why is everyone suddenly acting like someone just canceled our lease on the planet? And what is Dillon doing about it? He's the one who holds things together isn't he? ‘The King of Cohesion.' Isn't that why he's here? Isn't that why you're all here? Or are you just going to watch as everything falls apart?”

“Hey, I've got my own troubles, so if you called just to bitch at me, you can take your attitude and shove it.”

Drew smiled a slow, sedated grin. “Looks like we've both earned bitching privileges these past few days.” Drew took a deep breath, pumping enough oxygen to his brain to sober him. “Sit down. There's things we've got to talk about. Important things.”

Winston crossed his arms. “I'm listening.”

“Trust me,” said Drew. “You're going to want to sit down.”

Reluctantly Winston pulled up a musty high-backed chair, and took a seat across from Drew. The cushion stank of mildew.

“Ever hear of someone named Vicki Sanders?”

Winston shook his head. “Should I have?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” Drew reached beside him, picked up a backpack, and tossed it to Winston. “Take a look.”

Winston peered into the pack before reaching inside, as if whatever it held might bite. Inside he found some paperwork from a funeral home, a plot plan of a graveyard, and a red Bible with a gold Gideon stamp.

“Stealing a hotel Bible, Drew? That's low.”

“It's not mine. Check the inside cover.”

Winston opened it to find that someone had used the watermark as a note pad, filling it with various phone numbers, and doodles. The only name on the page was that of Vicki Sanders, but there was no phone number beside the name.

“The blueprints are of Corona Del Mar Memorial Park,” Drew said. “The circled grave belongs to Michael. And this backpack belonged to the man who tried to rob his grave.”

Winston snapped his eyes up from the backpack in surprise, but it quickly resolved into resignation.

“Reason enough for the bat signal?” asked Drew.

Winston flipped through the bible, but found no other marks beyond the ones on the inside cover. “Who was he?”

“His name is Martin Briscoe, and he's pretty damn self-important. Even more self-important than you. He said he was on some kind of mission. Now do you want to hear the creepy part?”

Winston wondered if there was any part of this story that wasn't creepy. “Sure, why not.”

“He said he had to destroy Michael's remains.”

The morning sun did nothing to carry away the chill of the news. Even in death could there be no rest for them?

“He jammed his shovel into my arm, and I shot him in the eye with a blank,” Drew said. “I'll survive, but unfortunately so will he.”

Winston stood and began to pace the dusty floor. “Do you know where he came from? Was he from some cult?” If one person found Michael's grave, Winston knew others would, too. There were cults and crazies out there, more now than ever before. He remembered stories of how people regularly pried open the crypts of every celebrity from Marilyn Monroe
to Elvis until their bodies had to be moved to protect them from their own legend. And now there was a man out there hell bent on destroying Michael's remains. In a world where logic was diffracting out of focus, why should Winston expect this man's actions to make sense . . . except for the fact that they did. Because destroying Michael's remains was not the senseless act it seemed. It was a surgical strike against the shards; there had to be a body for a resurrection. “Destroying Michael's remains is the only way to make sure Dillon can never bring him back.”

Drew nodded. “Somebody big doesn't like you guys a whole lot.”

Winston shuddered at the thought. Somebody big? How big? “If there's someone who wants to make sure Dillon doesn't bring Michael back . . . maybe there's a reason why Dillon
should
bring him back.”

“Whatever else you might have been,” Drew said. “You guys were a truly fearsome fivesome.”

It was true. Even with their formidable powers, the shards had always been stronger when they were together. Even with Deanna gone, Winston, Dillon, Tory, Michael, and Lourdes had been far greater together. “Whoever's doing this wants to make sure that we're never together again. Never whole—never complete.”

And all at once it occurred to Winston that this grave robber could be the man in the lavender chair, who invaded his dreams. The man who prepared the way for the faceless three. The more he considered it, the more certain he was. “Michael can't be left there unprotected.”

“I'm way ahead of you,” Drew told him, as he rocked gently back and forth, his feet on the edge of the foot locker. “Michael's safe,” Drew said. “He's among friends. . . .”

When it hit Winston just what Drew was saying, it hit him
hard. He hadn't eaten much over the past twenty-four hours, but now his late night burger and fries came surging toward daylight.

Drew had robbed Michael's grave to prevent someone else from doing it first, and now sat sentinel beside his friend's body. Michael was in the foot locker. God! No wonder Drew had tried to numb himself senseless with painkillers.

Winston fell to his knees, turned away, and retched onto the floor.

Damn you, Dillon, where are you?
If ever there was a time Dillon needed to be here, now was that time.

“Don't worry about cleaning up,” Drew said in that even, Vicodin-buffered voice. “The carpet's history anyway.”

When Winston had recovered, he approached Drew, trying to keep the foot locker in his blind spot; then he gently touched Drew's wounded arm. “I can't heal it for you, but this should do something.”

Drew nodded. “I had lost some sensation in my fingertips. I just found it again. Thanks.”

“Nerve tissue regeneration,” said Winston. “No biggie.” Winston picked up the Bible, and looked at the notes scribbled across the watermark.

“I've tried the phone numbers in a dozen different area codes,” Drew told him. “I got a dry-cleaner in San Diego, a nursing home in East LA, and that's about it. Nothing that seems related.”

“And Vicki Sanders?”

“I've found about a dozen of them on the Internet.”

“Then we'll track down every one, until we find the one who can tell us what's going on.” Winston forced himself to look at the foot locker resting ominously inert in the center of the room. Someone was fighting a guerilla war against them, but it was time to fight back. And if anyone were going to touch Michael's body, they'd have to go through Winston to do it.

S
HARKS
. M
ADDY
H
AAS COULD NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT
sharks. How the big ones would lose their stability, listing drunkenly in the largest of tanks, not knowing up from down, until they finally died. Hammerheads, Great Whites, Tiger sharks—none of them could survive in captivity.

“Shoop. Tomatoshoop.”

Dillon's stupor was drug-induced, but like those sharks, it was an awful thing to behold. A being of such awe and majesty so suppressed as to choke on his own senses.

“Howstheshoop. Schloop. Sloop John B . . .”

An octopus in a tank, Maddie recalled, could squeeze itself through a hole in the glass an eighth of an inch wide, and die on the floor rather than be held in an aquarium.

“ ‘So hoisht up the John B's shails, shee how the blah blah blah. Call fr the cap'n ashore n'lemme go home . . .' ”

She hated Bussard for doing this to Dillon, and hated the fact that she was also a party to it.

She tasted the soup, which was saltier than the Dead Sea. Apparently Dillon's blood pressure was not of concern to Bussard. Maddy dipped in the spoon and blew on it to cool it down for Dillon, who sat before her, immobilized in his chair.

Maddie looked around Dillon's cubical cell, as he continued to sing, his volume slipping in and out like a radio with a bad tuner. Bussard had told her there were only a handful of people with security clearance to be in there, and she wondered what on earth made Bussard trust her enough to be one
of those people. Then it occurred to her, it wasn't how much he trusted her, it was how little he trusted everyone else.

In her three weeks of meals with Dillon—especially those days before they began to drug him, she had learned from Dillon firsthand what he had been through, and who he truly was. The man beneath the myth, more boy than man. He was not, as Bussard suggested, secretive about himself, or his motives. It was the fact that he was so forthcoming that made Bussard suspicious, and he continued to scrutinize the tapes of her meals with Dillon.

“Are you afraid of me, Maddy?” Dillon had asked her early on, when her hands still shook while feeding him. And since he could read the pattern of a lie, she had told him the truth. Yes, she was. When she had first arrived at the plant—and first came to know who they had trussed up in this place—she had been frightened of his eyes, invasive by nature. They seemed uncontained by the mask. His presence had been—still was—a tidal wave before her; a wall of looming force from which there was no hiding. No wonder he was worshipped. No wonder he was feared. Yet although the sensation of his power hadn't diminished, it was a feeling she had come to enjoy. If he asked her now whether or not she feared him, she'd have to tell him that she wasn't really sure.